MWSA Review

Reprieved from the sentence of death, criminal Quintus Fulvius found himself drafted into the Roman Army more than a century before Caesar came to power. Although he had not finished his basic training, he was thrust into combat where fate and fear left him standing while the rest of his unit fled the enemy. This act of bravery thrust him into the spotlight of his superiors, and he gained instant promotion to centurion.

Through Q. Fulvius: Debt of Dishonor, the author writes of the daily duties occupying the Roman legionaries, with Fulvius learning on the job as he schemes to enrich himself. He puts the reader into horrific battle scenes and on grueling marches. When Fulvius’s century is charged with protecting a pass from raiding Gauls, he conspires to collect fees from traders passing through his fortification.

As Fulvius becomes wealthy, his century joins in the scheme until a tribune—a magistrate from Rome—arrives on the scene and attempts to extort excessive funds from the centurion. As Fulvius wrestles between his past as a petty criminal and a future of glory in the legion, he finds it difficult to stay in both worlds.

M. G. Haynes’s extensive research provides a rare glimpse into the life of a common soldier faced with greed and struggling to survive. I highly recommend this book.

 Review by Joe Epley (March 2020)

Author's Synopsis

In Rome, 216 BC, Fulvius is a murderer, a thief, and condemned to die. Saved by the catastrophic defeat of the Roman Army at the hands of the Carthaginian General Hannibal at nearby Cannae, he’s forced into the legion and an altogether unfamiliar world of soldierly duty and honor. Realizing promotion as the unexpected reward for paralyzing fear, Fulvius finds the Army not so dissimilar to the shadowy Roman underworld he knows so well and schemes to make the experience worth his while. He betrays, and is in turn betrayed, in a whirlwind cycle of threat, violence, and criminality leading to an ultimate showdown and reckoning that could undermine the entire war effort. Hannibal is no doubt coming, but that may be the least of Rome's troubles.

ISBN/ASIN: 1704643015, 978-1704643014, B082H5GKT8
Book Format(s): Soft cover, Kindle
Review Genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Number of Pages: 335